Jarrett-Carter.com

Which of these pictures gets you more riled up? The brawling hockey player or the enraged NBA superstar? The balding white guy or the baby-faced black guy? Which story is more disappointing to you? Which face looks more likely to be that of a thug or a criminal?

More than any other institution, sports serves as the great catalyst for social change. Themes of integration, equality and racial cooperation found root in dugouts and on benches well before lunch counters and high schools in Little Rock, AR. On the fields and courts of competition, we become equals, respectful of our abilities and united in our common pursuit of the goal of victory. But outside of arenas, our perceptions create a chasm of mistrust and dislike.

So it’s disheartening to know that in 2008, we are no closer to respecting and knowing each other than we were in 1928. We still share common values and goals, wants and needs; but when it’s not all about fun and competition, we are still more different than we could imagine.

We look at photos like the ones above and feel a wide range of emotions. Embarrassment, anger, fear and confusion are just a few that immediately come to mind. We are embarrassed that at some point, we rooted for guys with less than sterling character. We’re angry that they abused our trust, afraid that other are capable of the same thing, and confused as to why it will continue to happen.

Luckily, we sports fans have evolved to a good place where coverage and opinion are mostly driven by the popularity of the sport, and the popularity of villainous athlete in question. Incidents that occur with basketball and football players naturally draw more scrutiny and response than stories with baseball and hockey, because more people are familiar with the sports and this allegiance creates a greater national interest in the story.

But race, not racism, is still a component in these national discussions and in their coverage. Black and white athletes behaving badly gets two different levels of coverage, and that’s more so our conditioning than it is inherent racism. None of us wakes up believing that Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens is the scourge of the earth, but we wake up knowing which person we’d prefer to be trapped in an elevator with.

And that sentiment shows up everyday in your sports pages and broadcasts. It’s not bad, it’s natural. What makes it bad, is that the natural reaction is to think the white man has it out for us, or that the black man wants a pass. Neither is 100 percent true, but both are true enough that they will remain natural for a long time, and naturally acceptable for us to live our lives by.

The true solution is to look at race in the same way we do sports. Games are won and lost on inches gained or lost, balls and strikes, and goals. We all are equipped with a sense of instant replay; to think about what our actions and reactions are, and reassess them before they become practice or policy. If we can live with the fact that athletes, like most of us, are imperfect in our thought processes, we can live with the fact that we have deeply ingrained prejudices that should be acknowledged and dealt with; not matter how politically incorrect they may be.

Acknowledge how you feel when you see Pacman Jones on TV, and ask yourself if it is a valid way to feel about him, or people that look like him. If we can fix the way we look at sports and athletes, we just might fix the way we look at the entire world.

And that would be a picture-perfect way to live.